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| Thursday Jun 6, 2024 | |
| For many energy markets across the United States where renewables have been adopted as an important portion of the supply stack, the seasonal trends are the opposite of wind’s renewable counterpart of solar energy. That is, whereas the summer approaches and brings more heat and intense solar rays, wind typically peaks during the month of April, then begins to decline over the rest of the spring to bottom out during the summer. Our latest Renewable Monthly Report, “May 2024 – Giving Way to the Sun” discusses how this trend is playing out (and where it is not, namely CAISO) and puts the spotlight onto solar across the country. California solar has been front and center all year, with massive oversupply problems in Southern California providing the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jun 5, 2024 | |
| It’s the first week of June and the official start to summer is only a few short weeks away. For nuclear plants across the country, this means outage season is wrapping up as plants prepare to offer baseload energy during the high-demand summer months. The drop-off in nuclear outages over the last several weeks has been drastic, as shown in our Daily NRC Nuclear Plant Summary Dashboard. Earlier in the spring, many plants were offline for refueling and outages peaked over 20 GW in April. By the middle of May this number dropped under 13 GW. In the first few days of June, the total number of outages was under 2 GW and now sits around 3 GW. Only two plants are still ramping back online after refueling while over 25 plants completed their maintenance and are back online from refueling ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 4, 2024 | |
| The heat is on, and it pertains to the western energy grid as the Pacific Northwest looks to have its daytime highs reach into the mid/upper 80’s while parts of the Desert Southwest are looking at the 110-115 degree marker by Thursday. Figure 1 | AG2 Southwest Region Heat Map – Delta From Normal Now one might recall that it was in June 2021 when the Pacific Northwest was wrapped within the newly minted ‘term’ now known as a ‘heat dome’. This is when a high-pressure system pushes up from the south and wards off the low-pressure system off the Pacific near Alaska. The event was quite extreme given the region saw the daytime high reach 120 degrees if not a few degrees warmer when you consider all the elements. This was the first ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 3, 2024 | |
| May has come and gone with plenty of action items that lay the foundation for what is to come in June and that of the summer months better known as Q3 (July, August and September). The recently released eCommerce Monthly Recap, titled ‘May’s Blossoming Flowers’ details how the natural gas landscaped played out after an April with limited upside when it came to the near-term price action, how the power sector is dealing with the influx renewables and how Mother Nature impacts the power demand numbers. Figure 1 | May’s Blossoming Flowers The content mentioned above is part of the Platinum/Platinum packages we offer via our eCommerce platform on the EnergyGPS website. Just like any other month that gets put in the books, there is a lot of muscle building that ... » read more | |
| Friday May 31, 2024 | |
| In 1932 construction was completed on the Owyhee Dam making it the tallest dam in the world at the time (417 feet) [1]. Located in eastern Oregon, it served as a prototype for the Hoover Dam which claimed the title in 1936. The Owyhee Dam is still in operation providing flood control, irrigation, and some energy. Upstream of the Dam is the Owyhee Reservoir, the largest Reservoir in Oregon stretching 52 miles! I had the pleasure, or misfortune, of rowing several of the 52 miles on the Owyhee after our motor died last week at the end of a rafting trip. Figure 1 | Location of the Owyhee Dam. The float on the Owyhee occurs over a short window, one which was described by Tim Belden in a recent blog. In happenstance, both Tim and I were on the river at the same ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 30, 2024 | |
| Much of the discussion tied to renewables so far in 2024 has revolved around solar generation, and the great leaps made in installed capacity and MW hitting the grid in markets all across the country. In the Midwest and Northeast, both PJM and MISO are seeing significantly increased solar generation and MISO is seeing the added solar impacting evening price formation despite solar penetration still remaining relatively low. ERCOT is seeing market disruptions of its own with its version of the duck curve and capacity concerns tied to structural demand growth have left the evening ramp exposed in such a way as to depart from the way thermal resources have been dispatched historically, with ERCOT’s coal units now behaving more like peakers plants. We’ve ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 29, 2024 | |
| There is only one coal plant left in Alberta. With ambitious clean energy goals, the province began 2024 with only two coal plants, both part of Capital Power’s Genesee Generating Station. As of this month, Genesee 1 as a coal plant is retired and is currently being refitted to run as a natural gas plant. Genesee 2 is set to make that same transition later this year. This will leave Alberta’s grid completely reliant on natural gas for their thermal stack, along with growing renewables and support on the interties. Figure 1 | Genesee Generating Station (Capital Power) Previously providing round-the-clock baseload energy, coal generation in Alberta has gradually dropped over the past few months. The figure below shows the average hourly profile of load and different supply ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 28, 2024 | |
| The weather pattern across the country continues to bring with it both uncertainty around the type of event and what the electricity hourly price settles have in store. For example, is the weather event plain old heat or does it come with tornado like winds, or do we just get the latter in parts of the country that typically would not have to worry about such. Both scenarios detailed played out over the Memorial Day weekend as the southern portion of the Lower 48 delivered tornados along with sustained heat that continues to show its hand as the long holiday weekend comes to an end. As you move up into the Ohio Valley, the pathway for such storms slices through Kentucky and made their way through the Northeast leaving damaged neighborhoods behind. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |
| Friday May 24, 2024 | |
| ERCOT is in the middle of an extended stretch of hotter-than-normal weather. The worst of the heat is still to come, over this upcoming weekend, but today is hot as well, with highs in the 90s or 100s depending on the region. Figure 1 | ERCOT Temperature Forecast from WSI Trader, 5/23/24 – 5/28/24 The heat has brought with it higher load. Of course, in ERCOT, there is always the possibility for high load to be offset with high wind and solar generation. High levels of renewable output have kept the net load more or less in check over the past couple of weeks of heat (despite the fact that the grid has had to contend with more generator outages than usual for this time of year). But the outlook for today is for wind to die down during the highest-load hours of the afternoon and ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 23, 2024 | |
| Much of the conversation around MISO since the winter has been tied to renewables and the rapid growth displayed by solar in particular. Solar capacity (at least as it translated to solar MW on the MISO grid) has grown steadily for several years leading up to 2024. But since January of this year the growth has been explosive. The figure below plots average hourly MISO solar generation by month, going back to the start of 2020 with the blue bars in the top pane. The red line represents a running maximum instead of average solar output, as a proxy for actual observable, usable capacity in place. Overall, in 2023 this solar output rose by just over 700 MW, but over the first four-and-a-half months of 2024 the number has almost doubled, climbing 2.5 GW to reach ... » read more | |